Find out if layers are empty
Using pythons's any and all

In general, code like in your question can be shortened considerably using ptython's any or all methods. any is True if any item in a list is True, and all returns True if all are True.

In this case using any to determine if any object in the scene is on a designated layer.  any(o.layers[l] for l in layer_range) emulates your inner loop break.

import bpy
context = bpy.context
scene = context.scene
layer_range = [1,2,3,4,11,12,13,14]

dirty = any(any(o.layers[l] for l in layer_range)
            for o in scene.objects)        

print("Layer Range is dirty:", dirty)


PS: not sure this is "better", it is IMO more readable.